Vegetarianism - kirpalsingh.org

Vegetarianism
Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.
(Ben Franklin)
A man of spiritual intensity
does not eat corpses.
(George Bernard Shaw)
Behold I have given you herb yielding seed.
To you it shall be for meat.
(Bible, Genesis l:29)
-1-
The whole creation is the temple of God.
There is no place where He is not. In minerals life is sleeping;
in plants life is dreaming; in birds and animals life is awakening;
and in man life is awake. As such we are brothers of all creatures,
of plants, of birds and animals. So the flowers and trees, sparrows
and doves are as members of our own order. How simple, pure,
loving and beautiful they are! We should love all.
We should live in fellowship with all creatures, with all life.
One must not interfere with the life of any animal in God's creation.
(Sant Kirpal Singh, Portrait of Perfection, 143)
Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy
untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive
them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.
(Dostoyevsky)
All creatures are God’s children,
and those dearest to God are those who treat his children kindly.
(Mohammed)
-2-
Pity is always one and the same feeling that you have,
be it for an animal, for a man or for a tree.
(Leo Tolstoy)
When man feels compassion towards all living beings,
then he will be noble.
(Buddha)
I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed.
I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not
bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe.
I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
(Vaslav Nijinsky)
He who harms animals has not understood or renounced deeds of sin.
Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions do
not desire to live at the expense of others.
(Acharanga Sutra)
Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same
pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death,
the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life.
(Dick Gregory)
-3-
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
(Paul McCartney)
A country or civilization can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic and pesticide-laden
corpse of a tortured animal.
(Ingrid Newkirk)
If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse,
it will brand your soul for life.
(Howard Lyman)
The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually
destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment
of which our human nature is capable.
(Thomas More)
Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse
and thinks: they're only animals.
(Theodor Adorno)
-4-
The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder.
Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throat
of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we are ourselves the
living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal
conditions on the earth?
(Isadora Duncan)
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the
shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal
likewise with their fellow men.
(St. Francis of Assisi)
The question is not, “Can animals reason?” nor, “Can animals talk?”
but, “Can animals suffer?
(Jeremy Bentham)
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human
being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb
for the sake of the human body.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all
evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still
savages. (Thomas Edison)
-5-
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is
concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies,
involves so much cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual –
not destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of nature – to shudder.
(William A. Alcott)
I like animals, all animals. I wouldn’t hurt a cat or a dog or a chicken
or a cow. And I wouldn’t ask someone else to hurt them for me.
That’s why I’m a vegetarian.
(Peter Dinklage)
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs.
We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an
early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men
such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the
murder of men.
(Leonardo da Vinci)
I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat
it raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it
processed for you.
(Margi Clark)
-6-
Thousands of people who say they “love” animals sit down once or
twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly
deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and
who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the slaughterhouse.
(Jane Goodall)
Thousands-millions and billions-of animals are killed for food.
That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially
in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and other
supplementary foods, so we have the capacity and the responsibility to
save billions of lives. I have seen many individuals and groups
promoting animal rights and following a vegetarian diet.
This is excellent.
(Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama)
Life remains immoral or only falsely moral,
if there is cruelty and killing for the satisfaction of our daily needs.
(Swami Avyaktananda)
"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only,
but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the
human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.
(Leo Tolstoy)
-7-
Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from
flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what
state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore
and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth
tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment
the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.
How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and
hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the
stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste,
which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and
serums from mortal wounds?
(Plutarch)
I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man
was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and allow
his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being; who spread his table
with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and
dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement,
with perception and with voice. For the sake of some little mouthful
of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of
life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
(Plutarch)
-8-
Just as in our days, combats of gladiators, torture of prisoners,
and other atrocities are held to be scandalous and shameful,
while in earlier times they were thought quite justifiable and right,
so in the future will be the murder of animals, to feed upon their
corpses, be pronounced to be immoral and indefensible.
(Wilhelm Zimmermann, 1819-1885)
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
(George Bernard Shaw)
Would you kill your pet dog or cat to eat it? How about an animal
you're not emotionally attached to? Is the thought of slaughtering a
cow or chicken or pig with your own hands too much to handle?
Instead, would hiring a hit-man to do the job give you enough distance
from the emotional discomfort? What animal did you put a contract
out on for your supper last night?
(Unknown)
-9-
Flesh-eating by humans is unnecessary, irrational, anatomically
unsound, unhealthy, unhygienic, uneconomic, unaesthetic,
unkind and unethical. May I elaborate?
(Helen Nearing)
No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly
murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he
does. (Henry David Thoreau)
A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.
(David Brenner)
To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.
(Buddha)
-10-
All God's creatures are God's family.
(Mohammed)
Poor little innocent creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could
speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death,
and what have you done to deserve it?
(Saint Richard of Wyche)
If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth - beings
who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to
be to other animals - would you concede them the rights over you that
you assume over other animals?
(George Bernard Shaw)
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race,
in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals,
as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other
when they came in contact with the more civilized.
(Henry David Thoreau)
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food;
therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely
for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
(Leo Tolstoy)
-11-
You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.
If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.
(Harvey Diamond)
Yes, I am a vegetarian. I find the thought of stuffing fragments of
corpses down my throat quite repulsive, and I am amazed that so
many people do it every day.
(J. M. Coetzee)
We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim,
or fly away if he could.
(James Cromwell)
I presume that very few men and very few women would be willing to
go and catch hold either sheep or of oxen and themselves slaughter the
creatures in order that they may eat. Now, I venture to submit that if
people want to eat meat, they should kill the animals for themselves,
that they have no right to degrade other people by work of that sort.
Nor should they say that if they did not do it the slaughter would still
go on. Every person who eats meat takes a share in that degradation
of his fellow-men; on him and on her personally lies the share, and
personally lies the responsibility.
(Annie Besant)
-12-
It is frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed,
and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this
by necessity; while in sinning against the defenseless and helpless,
just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon
our compassion, we succeed only in brutalizing ourselves.
(George Friedrich Daumer)
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle
of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature and its beauty.
(Albert Einstein)
He is closest to God who harms no living creature.
(Lord Krishna)
May all that have life be delivered from suffering.
(Mahavira, founder of the Jain religion)
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts,
how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?
(George Bernard Shaw)
For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed,
he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
(Pythagoras)
-13-
It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God,
the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary
compassion towards our fellow creatures.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
I do feel that spiritual progress does demand, at some stage,
that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction
of our bodily wants.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
I did not become a vegetarian for my health,
I did it for the health of the chickens.
(Isaac Bashevis Singer)
Man has turned earth into a hell for animals.
(Albert Schweitzer)
How can you eat anything with eyes?
(Will Kellogg)
-14-
Love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
(Charles Darwin)
It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary
preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion,
and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite
intolerable loathing and disgust.
(Percy Bysshe Shelley)
The members of my family were meat eaters. As a child, I did not
partake of it. My father said, “Pal, (this was my nickname), why don’t
you take meat? It will do you good.” I replied, “Will you have me
make a graveyard out of my body?”
(Sant Kirpal Singh; Portrait of Perfection, p. 7)
There is no logical basis to support the theory that plants feel pain.
The dubious possibility that they might, however, is no justification
for killing obviously sentient beings. Any rational person understands
the striking difference between slitting the throat of a sentient animal
and plucking a fruit or a vegetable.
(Joanne Stepaniak)
-15-
As soon as I realized that I didn't need meat to survive or to be in good
health, I began to see how forlorn it all is. If only we had a different
mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest
of it. It's a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American
culture, but I've seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and
their hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget.
(Cloris Leachman)
So-called farms today treat animals like so many boxes in a
warehouse, chopping off beaks and tails and genitals with no
painkillers at all, inflicting third-degree burns repeatedly by branding
cows, and just a horrible catalog of abuses that, if done to dogs or cats,
would be illegal on grounds of animal cruelty.
(James Cromwell)
A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has
seen: “Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times.
Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and
they're up there agonizing. They're supposed to be re-stunned but
sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive.
I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones.
They're all the same. If people were to see this, they'd probably feel
really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to
it that it doesn't mean anything.
(Slaughterhouse 1997)
-16-
Chickens raised for food today are covered in excrement, they're
diseased, and they're drugged up with all sorts of toxins that you are
ingesting if you eat chickens. One recent study found that chicken
flesh in this country has four times as much arsenic—yes, arsenic, the
poison (which is used in the drugs the chickens are given) as any other
meat… I have been a vegan for many years.
(Russell Simmons)
We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel
and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty is a fundamental sin, and admits
of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart
to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and
yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact,
anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.
(Rabindranath Tagore)
Isaac Newton thought it a very frightful inconsistency to believe that
animals feel and at the same time to cause them to suffer.
On this point his morality was in accord with his philosophy.
(Voltaire)
It is incredible and shameful that neither indoctrinators nor moralists
raise their voices against the abuse toward animals.
(Voltaire)
-17-
As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish,
he always had the same thought: In their behavior toward creatures,
all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with
other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist
theories, the principle that might is right.
(Isaac Bashevis Singer)
As I cannot kill, I cannot authorize others to kill. Do you see?
If you are buying from a butcher you are authorizing him to kill –
to kill helpless, dumb creatures which neither you nor I could kill
ourselves.
(Paul Troubetzkoy)
Meat is for beasts to feed on.
(Ovid)
Only by discarding a diet based on rotting corpses
could men become sane.
(Jack Lindsay)
-18-
The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more
agonizing...for once started upon that journey, the hog never came
back. One by one the men hooked up the hogs and slit their throats.
There was a line of hogs with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away…
until at last each vanished into a huge vat of boiling water (some still
alive). The hogs were so innocent. They came so very trustingly.
They were so very human in their protests. They had done nothing
to deserve it.
(Upton Sinclair)
We marvel that there should have been men, that there still should be
men who slay human beings in order to eat their flesh. The time will
come when our grandchildren will marvel that their grandfathers had
been in the habit of killing millions of animals every day in order to
eat them, although they could satisfy their hunger both wholesomely
and pleasantly with the fruits of the earth and without killing.
(Leo Tolstoy)
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things,
man will not himself find peace.
(Albert Schweitzer)
Does every creature have a soul? Surely they do, for anything God
has touched will have life forever, and all creatures he has held.
(Saint Francis of Assisi)
-19-
I became a vegetarian because I was persuaded that life is as valid for
other creatures as it is for humans. I do not need dead animal bodies
to keep me alive, strong and healthy.
Therefore, I will not kill for food.
(Scott Nearing)
Human beings are meant to eat vegetarian food. The tiger does not
come to eat your fruits. His prescribed food is animal flesh.
But man’s food is vegetables, fruits, grains, and milk products.
So how can you say that animal killing is not a sin?
(Swami Prabhupada,)
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged
by the way its animals are treated.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
The human flesh and the flesh of beasts is similar and their
crimson blood is also the same.
(Kabir)
There is not a single argument nor a single fact that can be offered in
favor of flesh eating that cannot be offered, with equal strength, in
favor of cannibalism.
(Herbert Shelton)
-20-
I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity
of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly
painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other
condition, they would relinquish it forever.
(W.E.H. Lecky)
Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism,
nothing so surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly
argue, will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practice it.
And yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes of
the Buddhist and the vegetarian. We consume the carcasses of
creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves;
we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-house
resounds daily with screams of pain and fear. We distinguish, indeed;
but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an animal with
whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows how precariously
the distinction is grounded.
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
-21-
Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that
God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be
written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more
clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are
to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We
all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.
(Leo Tolstoy)
You take this meat eating. Many people have to kill the animals
because of your non-vegetarianism. You are responsible for the death
of those animals. They are killed because you eat them. This is a sin.
What a sin to kill innocent animals and eat them.
(Sri Sathya Sai Baba)
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely,
for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously
devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of
bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with
vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along
in spite of every obstacle.
(Henry David Thoreau)
-22-
I'm a vegetarian - I think there's a strong possibility, had I not become
a vegetarian, I would not be working now. I became a vegetarian
about 25 years ago, and I did it out of concern for animals. But I
immediately began having more energy and feeling better.
(Bob Barker)
Grant animals a ray of reason, imagine what a frightful nightmare the
world is to them: a dream of cold-blooded men, blind and deaf, cutting
their throats, slitting them open, gutting them, cutting them into pieces,
cooking them alive, sometimes laughing at them and their contortions
as they writhe in agony. Is there anything more atrocious among the
cannibals of Africa? To a man whose mind is free there is something
even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the
sufferings of men. For with the latter it is at least admitted that
suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But
thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a
shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be
thought ridiculous—and that is the unpardonable crime.
(Romain Rolland)
-23-
We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a
Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our
young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our
plates, we suddenly realized we were eating the leg of an animal who
had until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each
other and said: "Wait a minute, we love these sheep - they're such
gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?"
It was the last time we ever did.
(Paul and Linda McCartney)
I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the
sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so,
because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of
others by recalling my own sufferings. I feel happy, nobody
persecutes me; why should I persecute other beings or cause them to
be persecuted? I am no prisoner, I am free; why should I cause other
creatures to be made prisoners and thrown into jail? Nobody harms
me; why should I harm other creatures or have them harmed? Nobody
wounds me; nobody kills me; why should I wound or kill other
creatures or cause them to be wounded or killed for my pleasure and
convenience? (Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz)
-24-
The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all
the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile
accidents combined. If beef is your idea of "real food for real people"
you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.
(Neal Barnard, MD)
Methionine in meat becomes homocysteine.
High homocysteine levels quadruple the chance of heart attack.
(Time Magazine August 97 - A Finnish hospital study)
It is significant to note that those who live on vegetarian food are less
prone to diseases, whereas non-vegetarians are subject to more
diseases. Why? Because animal food is incompatible with the needs
of the human body. (Sri Sathya Sai Baba)
-25-
Heart attacks... God's revenge for eating his little animal friends.
(Author Unknown)
Being a meat eater is really expensive,
even if you don't count the cost of chemo.
(Snargleplexon.com)
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival
for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
(Albert Einstein)
-26-
Carnivore - Herbivore – Man: Physiological Comparisons
Some people think it's our right to eat meat - we're at the top of the food chain,
we can eat what we want. Just because we can eat whatever we want doesn't
mean that it is right for us. Research indicates that we function better if we don't
eat meat. Our body blueprint also suggests we are not designed to eat meat.
Carnivore - Has claws
Herbivore - Has no claws
Human - Has no claws
Carnivore - No skin pores, perspires through tongue
Herbivore - Perspires through skin pores
Human - Perspires through skin pores
Carnivore - Sharp front teeth for tearing, no flat molar teeth for grinding
Herbivore - No sharp front teeth, has flat rear molars
Human - No sharp front teeth, has flat rear molars
Carnivore - Intestinal tract 3 times body length so rapidly decaying meat can
pass out quickly
Herbivore - Intestinal tract 10-12 times body length
Human - Intestinal tract 10-12 times body length
Carnivore - Strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivore - Stomach acid 20 times less strong than meat eaters
Human - Stomach acid 20 times less strong than meat eaters
When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh,
which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human
beings. (William C. Roberts, M.D. Editor of The American Journal of Cardiology)
Vegetarians live longer and suffer less from diseases such as heart disease, high
cholesterol, obesity, coronary artery disease, certain cancers and diabetes.
Vegetarian diets can be used to treat illnesses and reverse disease. When you
eat a slaughtered animal, you are not just ingesting its carcass but its diseases
(many animals are diseased that are slaughtered), hormones used to bulk up the
animal, antibiotics they are pumped with and you are also eating the adrenaline
and terror produced before and whilst the animal is being killed. This is
negative energy. These animals see each other die and they sense and are aware
of what is going on. It's all too easy to block this out when you buy meat from
your local supermarket.
-27-
What the Studies Say
For decades, a common public misconception was that a vegetarian diet lacked
protein. The meat industry began a series of promotional commercials with
slogans such as "meat is real food," implying a vegetarian diet was somehow
lacking. As more information came to light about the benefits of being
vegetarian, the public misconception changed. It then became, "Vegetarians can
get enough protein, but it isn't easy", which is equally untrue. Not only is it easy
to eat a balanced diet, the idea that it requires special effort whether vegetarian
or vegan is highly overstated.
Concern is due when the entire diet is limited to a few foods, as is the case in
many third world countries where rice, for example, might be the only staple. In
industrialized nations, however, where people eat a variety of foods on a daily
basis, eating too much protein is likelier than eating too little, even for
vegetarians and vegans.
The British Medical Association (BMA) was first to shed light on the many
benefits of a vegetarian diet in a 1986 report. Based on a large volume of
research, it concluded that vegetarians not only tend to have lower cholesterol,
but also significantly reduced instances of coronary heart disease, obesity, high
blood pressure, certain types of cancers, gall stones and large intestine disorders.
Beginning in 1983, The China Study, looked at 6,500 participants over the
course of several years, documenting their dietary habits, lifestyles and health.
This comprehensive study was a combined effort of the Chinese, United
Kingdom and United States. The first results were made public in 1989, and
were unequivocal. The less meat consumed, the lower the risk of developing
common chronic diseases as noted above. The study also debunked the Western
myth of promoting meat as a necessary source of iron. Among the largely
vegetarian-based diets of the Chinese, the average vegetarian had twice the iron
intake of the average U.S. citizen.
The highly respected World Health Organization (WHO) offered their own
findings on vegetarian and vegan diets in a 1991 report. WHO confirmed the
results of the BMA and the China study, but also found that meat and dairy-rich
diets promote other diseases as well, including osteoporosis or low bone density,
and kidney failure. WHO went so far as to predict the cancer crisis the world
now faces is based on the meat-rich dietary trends of Western nations. The
report candidly faulted governments for public Dietary Guidelines that promote
meat and dairy as necessary foods, urging more vegetarian-based policies where
animal products are relegated to optional status.
-28-
Another organization to weigh in on the matter of vegetarian and vegan diets
was the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). This group
consists of some 5,000 U.S. doctors, including the editor for The American
Journal of Cardiology, William Roberts. Criticized by some as biased for their
humane ethics, the PCRM reviewed over 100 published studies from around the
world. It confirmed that significantly lower disease rates are directly linked to
vegetarian and vegan diets. In their 1995 report, the PCRM urged the U.S.
government to update dietary policies to reflect these findings. In 1996, about
the same time as the previous studies were being conducted, The Oxford Study
was underway. Gathering data over a period that spanned an excess of 13 years
and involved over 11,000 people, it not only confirmed lower rates of heart
disease, diabetes, cancer and other diseases among vegetarians, but also found a
20% decrease in premature mortality rates. Simply put, if you eat a vegetarian or
vegan diet, you have a 20% better chance of living longer than if you eat meat,
according to the study.
The positive findings of vegetarian and vegan diets are also echoed by the
American Dietetic Association (ADA), which ranks among the list of
proponents. The ADA is one of the most highly respected advisory boards
worldwide.
Criticism may be attempted as to how the data was interpreted, or the politics of
those supporting it. However, until redundant, solid, peer-reviewed research
causes organizations like the ADA, BMA, and WHO to reverse their positions,
this is not really a valid argument. For over two decades the body of worldwide
medical evidence supporting vegetarian and vegan diets has been growing, is
overwhelming, and to date, is indisputable. Policies addressed this for the first
time, stating that a vegetarian diet is healthy, meets Recommended Daily
Allowances, and does not lack protein.
http://www.squidoo.com/veg2009?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campaign=framebuster
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Why I Stopped Eating Meat
(from internet website)
For everyone this is different. Most people who stop eating meat have thought
about it on and off for a while before they make the switch. Then it's usually an
incident - something you read, something you see or something you learn - when
you finally say enough is enough.
For me, even though I enjoyed eating meat I'd always been a bit funny about it. I
was brought up on meat, but I was also very close to my various cats, dogs and
rabbits and I felt a little wrong eating any animal. I didn't think it was right for
an animal to die just because I wanted to eat it. I was aware that animals felt
pain, fear, joy and love.
I continued eating meat until I was 27. Not a lot of meat, I'd already given up red
meat but I was still in the 'final transition' stage. I remember I was eating at a
pub, and as usual I was picking at tiny, almost invisible veins in my grilled fish.
My partner at the time said I really should just stop eating meat and I knew I
should just do it.
The same week I was in the car with my sister driving down a highway behind a
huge livestock-transport truck heading to a slaughterhouse. There were over 100
cows cruelly crammed into this huge double-decker road-train and I forced
myself to look at the cows as we passed. I disliked the fact that I was supporting
the death of these gentle animals by eating them. As we passed, one cow looked
through the metal bars at me for at least the 30 seconds it took for us to overtake
the truck. This cow and I looked at each other directly in the eyes - him through
his metal bars that held him in the truck and me in the freedom of the car
passing him. It was like he looked into my soul. I knew they were frightened and
terrified and that bothered me. I knew I couldn't stop this cow from going to his
death but I could stop my part in putting to death animals from that day on.
Right then and there I vowed I wouldn't eat meat again. And I haven't. It's a
decision I'm most proud of and most empowered by. That's an awesome feeling.
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I was saddened by that experience - even now typing it, it still saddens me.
Natural death is normal. Killing is not normal, it's not healthy nor is it
progressive. It's regressive and cruel and it's extremely sad. The pain and
suffering that the meat industry embodies does not sit well with me or my ideals
of a better world.
Nine years on and ceasing to eat meat is the one decision I am proud of every
day. Although I could pay more attention to the 'health' aspect of my diet like by
eating more raw vegetables and fruit, I never get sick. I heal extremely fast, I
look younger than my years and I don't ever take medication.
I want to learn all I can about this lifestyle because it has become a passion. This
lifestyle creates big ideas of where this world could go. It creates positive
reactions that affect so many more avenues of your life than simply cooking and
eating. It begins to affect everything in a more positive way.
http://www.squidoo.com/veg2009?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campaign=framebuster
On an average day in America, 130,000 cattle, 7,000 calves,
360,000 pigs, and 24 million chickens are killed.
(“The Inhumanity of the Animal People,” Harper’s, August 1997)
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In the United States, around nine billion animals are slaughtered every year.
This includes about 150.4 million cattle, bison, sheep, hogs, and goats and 8.9
billion chickens, turkeys, and ducks.
For her book “Slaughterhouse,” Gail Eisnitz, chief investigator for the Humane
Farming Association (HFA), interviewed slaughterhouse workers in the U.S.
who say that, because of the speed with which they are required to work,
animals are routinely skinned while apparently alive, and still blinking, kicking,
and shrieking. Eisnitz argues that this is not only cruel to the animals, but also
dangerous for the human workers, as cows weighing several thousands of
pounds thrashing around in pain are likely to kick out and debilitate anyone
working near them.
According to the HFA, Eiznitz interviewed slaughterhouse workers representing
over two million hours of experience, who, without exception, told her that they
have beaten, strangled, boiled, and dismembered animals alive, or have failed to
report those who do. The workers described the effects the violence has had on
their personal lives, with several admitting to being physically abusive or taking
to alcohol and other drugs.
The HFA alleges that workers are required to kill up to 1,100 hogs an hour, and
end up taking their frustration out on the animals. Eisnitz interviewed one
worker, who had worked in ten slaughterhouses, about pig production. He told
her:
Hogs get stressed out pretty easy. If you prod them too much, they have heart
attacks. If you get a hog in the chute that's had the shit prodded out of him and
has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his
bunghole. You try to do this by clipping the hipbone. Then you drag him
backwards. You're dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook
rips out of the bunghole. I've seen hams — thighs — completely ripped open.
I've also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute,
you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse)
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Diet and Spirituality
(Dona Kelley; from Lotus Leaves)
When one enters the spiritual life of Sant Mat, he also takes upon himself the
discipline of becoming a vegetarian. This means abstaining from the eating of
all animal flesh (meaning “flesh, fish and fowl” and including eggs), together
with any animal by-products or derivatives.
There are two basic reasons for this prohibition. First, the body, the temple of
God, must be kept clean and vital. Secondly, karmic law plays a very definite,
and important, part in the progress of the soul’s internal progress. From the
karmic standpoint, it is impossible to understand and evaluate all of the facts
involved in a carnivorous diet, until one has thoroughly purified himself and
thus detached his thinking and feeling from the bondage of mind and matter,
which has for so long enveloped the soul, holding it to the wheel of re-birth.
While there is a weak life-current present in fruits and vegetables, remember
that such are not sentient (feeling) life-forms. In a cow, for instance, the lifeforce is far greater than it is in a head of lettuce. All Masters tell us that there
are more active tattvas, or etheric life-force, in any animal than is present in any
vegetable or fruit. Thus, a vegetarian, in eating fruits or vegetables, disturbs
only one tattva. It is manifestly impossible to live on earth without disturbing,
or “killing”, some form of life; the very air that we breathe swarms with myriads
of microscopic life-forms, which we inhale with every breath. This planet exists
by one form of life destroying another. Is it any wonder that there is no peace
on earth? Therefore, the Masters tell us to subsist by using that food which
involves the least destruction of life. The experts say that most fruits and
vegetables consist of about ninety-five percent water. Again, no pain is
involved in eating vegetables and fruits, while the animal cries out in agony
when its life is taken. The small amount of karma that is involved in eating
vegetables may be worked off easily, through meditation.
Apart from the practical health factors involved in one’s diet, it must also be
considered that God resides in this human temple. It follows, then, that a coarse
diet produces a coarse nature, while a refined, vegetarian diet purifies both body
and mind, making the temple a fit dwelling place for the indwelling Spirit.
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Hazur Baba Sawan Singh & Sant Kirpal Singh on Vegetarianism
(from letters to initiates)
I must point out that animal food, even if a single particle is eaten, is detrimental
to spiritual progress. What of eating, those who help in killing are also guilty.
(Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, Letter 21)
All kinds of food are not suitable for all purposes. The food of a wrestler does
not suit a man engaged in office work or literary pursuits. Each kind of food has
its particular effect on the system, and thereby on the mind. Dull, loaded souls
do not feel this effect. Meat and eggs (fertile or infertile), and highly
concentrated foods and intoxicants do not suit those who wish to subdue animal
nature in them and who wish to still their mind and gain access to subtle planes.
This is not mere theory; it is based on practical experience. (Gems 55)
You will, perhaps, object that when nature has made creatures the food of
creatures, then why is animal food forbidden and are we told to subsist on a
vegetable diet? The answer is that sin, giving pain to the soul and mind,
depends upon the quantity of active tattwas. The vegetables and fruits are
recommended because they do not possess mind, or possess it in a dormant state,
incapable of feeling pain and complaining. Destroying of insects is a greater sin
than destroying vegetables, bird killing is worse than insect killing, and animal
killing is worse than bird killing, while man killing is the worst of all. There is
karma even in vegetable eating, but not so heavy as in animal food. (Gems 140)
About taking meat diet as directed by medical men; my advice is not to take it
on any account. It is a great hindrance in our spiritual progress. We are
governed by a very severe law of karma. To kill an animal is a heinous offense
under natural law, and its punishment is very severe. The saints have strictly
forbidden taking any sort of life in any way. (Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, 155)
I never gave permission to anyone to eat meat in my life. A mother does not
administer poison to her own children. In Sant Mat animal food cannot be
allowed under any conditions. It hardens the heart and makes the soul dull and
heavy. (Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, 170)
Sant Kirpal Singh
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Regarding laxity in the prescribed diet, I wish to say to all aspirants on the Path
that it is necessary so long as one is in the physical body, vegetarianism should
be strictly adhered to. Any relaxation in the matter of diet would not only be a
definite hindrance in meditation but would unnecessarily contract karmic
reaction. The real Goal is to use every means possible to rise into full Godconsciousness. (Sant Kirpal Singh, Spiritual Elixir, 243)
It must be borne in mind that restriction to pure vegetarian diet is of utmost
necessity. Any transgression in this respect is liable to affect your spiritual
progress adversely. The prohibited food flares up carnal desires other than
contracting karmic debt. Both are highly detrimental and should be avoided
scrupulously. I hope you are abiding by all of the rules and that you take my
advice in proper perspective in the larger interests of your spiritual progress.
(Sant Kirpal Singh, Spiritual Elixir, 244)
…I would like to remind you that the eating of liver and fish will definitely
stand in the way of your spiritual progress without in any way helping you in
your illness or in any way extending your lifespan. “Thy days are numbered,” is
a well known aphorism. So why unnecessarily create karmic debts which you
may easily avoid? You had better avoid these. (Kirpal Singh, Spiritual Elixir, 244)
Hazur Baba Sawan Singh
-35-
Lord Buddha and the Shepherd
As Lord Buddha was walking one day along a country road, he met a shepherd
who was driving his flock of sheep and goats to a nearby hill, where there was a
good grazing ground. One of the goats was lame and limped along slowly,
always falling behind the rest of the flock. But the shepherd showed no pity for
the poor beast, and lashed it mercilessly to make it keep up with the herd.
When Lord Buddha saw what was going on, his heart was moved by pity and
compassion. Stepping up to the shepherd, he asked: Where are you going with
your herd?"
The shepherd pointed to the nearby hill.
"Would you have any objection if I should carry this poor lame goat to the top
of the hill on my shoulders?" asked Lord Buddha.
The shepherd laughed.
"Why, of course not," he replied.
So Lord Buddha happily carried the goat to the top of the hill and
left it there with the rest of the flock.
How the Fakir Dealt with the Ants
A fakir once set out on a long journey, carrying with him a bundle filled with
bread to eat on the way. At the end of his first day on the road he came to a
small mosque, and there he rested for the night.
Resuming his journey early the next morning, he walked at a brisk pace for
about ten miles and then decided to have a bite to eat. But when he opened his
bundle, he found that his bread was full of ants.
"Ah, that is too bad," he thought. "For I have taken these poor ants a long way
away from their home in that mosque. How they must be longing to see their
parents, children and friends."
Filled with solicitude for the welfare of the ants, the fakir retraced his steps and
took the ants back to their home in the little mosque.
May your soul be happy;
journey joyfully.
(Rumi)
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